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IV estimation is examined when some instruments may be invalid. This is relevant because the initial just-identifying orthogonality conditions are untestable, whereas their validity is required when testing the orthogonality of additional instruments by so-called overidentification restriction tests. Moreover, these tests have limited power when samples are small, especially when instruments are weak. Distinguishing between conditional and unconditional settings, we analyze the limiting distribution of inconsistent IV and examine normal first-order asymptotic approximations to its density in finite samples. For simple classes of models we compare these approximations with their simulated empirical counterparts over almost the full parameter space. The latter is expressed in measures for: model fit, simultaneity, instrument invalidity, and instrument weakness. Our major findings are that for the accuracy of large sample asymptotic approximations instrument weakness is much more detrimental than instrument invalidity. Also, IV estimators obtained from strong but possibly invalid instruments are usually much closer to the true parameter values than those obtained from valid but weak instruments.

THE writer well remembers the interest and enthusiasm with which he received, on its publication, a copy of the first of a series of class lists, issued many years ago by the Public Library of Clerkenwell, under the librarianship of Mr. James Duff Brown. They were admirably compiled and contained several novel features, which made them a type destined to be extensively imitated elsewhere. Now comes from Islington, under the same capable editorship, a catalogue more fundamentally novel, so far at least as Public Library catalogues are concerned, than the class lists above referred to, and destined without question to be far more widely followed, as its advantages and value become generally appreciated. This is—to quote the secondary title—“A classified list of the best books on all subjects in the central, north, and west libraries,” i.e. a select catalogue.

Performance‐related pay (PRP) has grown in importance in the 1980s and is likely to continue growing. The reasons for this growth are examined: labour market factors, changes in organisational objectives, fairness in payment initiatives, weakening of collectivisation, and “fashion”. Problems associated with PRP are also explored. It is argued that PRP has a capacity to subvert the purposes for which it is intended by distorting pay structures, creating unfairness in reward systems and harming team spirit. PRP also detracts from the value of other performance appraisal objectives. Some of the problems inherent in measuring individual job performance are also considered.

The findings of a pilot study into contemporary developments in the UK car retailing sector are reported. Two trends were particularly apparent: a mounting concern with the quality of customer service and a rise in the number of multi‐franchise retail groups. Such groups appear to be more advanced than the volume manufacturers in their thinking about quality of service. Overall there was evidence of a limited shift in the nature of the relationship between the vehicle manufacturers and their retailers.

Drawing on the transaction theory of stress, the purpose of this paper is to conceptualize customer mistreatment as a stressor and examine how job routinization and proactive personality help employees cope with the effects of customer mistreatment on emotional exhaustion and work engagement. The interaction of job routinization and proactive personality was also tested.

In total, 128 hundred nurses were recruited to participate in the current study, which was a daily survey for two consecutive weeks (10 working days).

The results revealed that job routinization and proactive personality attenuated the effects of customer mistreatment on emotional exhaustion and work engagement. The analyses also showed that, with more proactive personality and high job routinization, the effects of customer mistreatment were minimized.

Job routinization is a type of job resources that attenuates the negative influence of customer mistreatment. Proactive personality strengthens job routinization’s function, when proactive personality and job routinization are both high, the ill effect of customer mistreatment will be minimized.